Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2025-11-17


The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by psvenk.

In attendance were

        Student keyholders: psvenk, dtemkin, nmorgan, innaavo, skylarh, alwinfy, turino14, anhad, xy

        Associate keyholders: almonds, scj643, rgabriel

        Members: ryanruiz, dsisson, ilyag, guoj1112, kshitij, mramosca

        Guests: '()

Administrivia:

        psvenk: SIPB dinner is this week. We will meet at 6pm at the office to go to India Pavilion, which is in Central Square (around 15 minute walk). 
        
        psvenk: We will send out a form to confirm attendance and to make a reservation. 
        
        [talk about various communication platforms]
        
        psvenk: as some of you may know, we go through a re-registration process with ASA every year. We upload our constituion and give some basic information like our membership. This year we were moved to the fall registration, and there was also some changes they want to make to our constituion (which will need to be approved by the EC). I do not expect giving up any power to the ASA, but there are some things that are vague that we could clarify. 
        
        dsisson: are they trying to force us to allow students for democratic society members? 
        
        psvenk: There is this thing called the ASA governance clause that says the ASA can overrule us at anytime. I think it was brought up in 2013 for the first time, but since we have a unique relationship with IS&T, we were able to put another cause regarding the governing clause that said it was only for recruiting purposes, and we reserve the right to leave the ASA if we so chose. 
        
        dsisson: Does the university want to get more power over us?  
        
        psvenk: We are also a member of the ASA which makes it easier for midway and space reservation, but these things would not be impossible if we were not part of the ASA. What I am saying is that there will likely be some constitutional amendments. 
        
        [discussion about the exact phrasing they want]
        
        psvenk: For EC election, we don't currently have a quorum, but I'm thinking quorum should be half of eligible student keyholders or 9 student keyholders, whichever is less. I will shortly show a pdf with a new constitution for transparency, but to be clear, I am not officially proposing this. 
        
        nmorgan: If we were to leave the ASA, what would be the biggest thing that would happen?
        
        psvenk: We would likely have to pay for classrooms to reserve. For midway, it might be a bit annoying to get in but it would still be possible. 
        
        psvenk: Motion to allocation $300 for SIPB Dinner. 
        
        innaavo: Seconded
        
        [motion for $300 passes by 19-0-0]
        
        scj643: did anyone get in contact with however we need to to get the license for VyOS 


Project Reports:

        scj643: SIPB Vault continues I have the VN [?] I just need someone to help me set up networking because it will be behind VyOS, preferably behind the MIT net and not the public net. 
        
        dsisson: hwops threw out a lot of old servers on friday. type: 2009 verari systems
        
        nmorgan: ARK continues. We have a cool mock in the works to model the frontend
        
        skylarh: Eventful continues. I have scheduled a meeting to move forward with having eventful at MIT events. That should be happening. The meeting is on Wednesday. At that point I will have more information. Yay. 
        
        
        dtemkin: hydrant continues eom.
        
        
        
        
Other:

        scj643: sipb has now aquired two yubikeys and a yubihsm
        
        dsisson: What makes these different from the other Yubikeys we have?
        
        scj643: They can do a lot more cryptographic operations a lot faster. There is a lot more access control with the YubiHSM.
        
        
        almonds: I finally got rid of the clothes pile under the table. The donation byn by Next House asks that the clothes are *bagged*.
        
        psvenk: thank you
        
        
        
Other Other:

        skylarh: drop date is sooner than you think
        
        
        scj643: i have made more contributions to open source recently. 
        
        nmorgan[?]: what projects 
        
        scj643: VyOS as they make their code available to contributors or paid subscribers. also I am contributing to openBao which is what we will be using for vault
        
        guoj1112: I recently used protonAuthenticator. Its a decent app. Its a 2FA
        
        psvenk: is protonAuthenticator free software?
        
        scj643: I heard there was a security issue 
        
        
        alwinfy: if you want to get a yubikey you can go to ATLAS and say you want to set up an account.
        
        almonds: do they ask who you are? Like your kerberos? 
        
        alwinfy: no you just show up, I dont think they do. they might. I have not been asked for my ID, they may have asked for my kerberos. 
        
        scj643: Also remember the YubiKey they will give you will most likely have the older firmware.
        
        rgabriel: More SIPB Mugs?
        
        innaavo: MORE SIPB MUGS!!!
        
        bzelnick: Admissions office asked SIPB Discord to run the 2030 discord server. We are going to help them verify admits using the new bot. We might need help. First of all, my bot has not ever been used in production to verify admits. We should have rgabriel's back up bot ready just in case something catastrophic happens. Admissions also wants our help to moderate. 
        
        almonds: It might be worth sharing the email in the mattermost as well just for context. 
        
The meeting was adjourned at 20:06.

        Minutes taken and submitted by innaavo and nmorgan.
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